December 19, 2007

Out Of Context Cinema: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

This Christmas, meet the Ice Cream Bunny. Its feet and hands barely work. Dogs fear it. It dances a constipated little jig. And somehow it is allowed to drive children around. Oh, and nobody has any idea what this abomination has to do with ice cream.

This 1972 kiddie matinee is one puzzling, incoherent little film. Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny promises an "Amazing" story with "Big Trouble" an "Exciting Rescue" and "Fun For All". Instead, it delivers mumbling voice-over, lingering beach shots, and the slowest rescue scene in history. It also offers children jumping off roofs, a gorilla, a cameo by Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (for no discernible purpose), and a huge chunk of its run time actually devoted to a children's theater production of Thumbelina produced two years earlier (thus also nullifying the claim of being "All New!"). For a wonderfully detailed and hilarious review of the whole terrifying film, visit The Agony Booth.

Of course, none of this is a surprise if you know that the "film" was conceived and shot with no budget over a weekend at the Pirate's World amusement park in Florida, and was produced by nudie cutie master Barry Mahon. And perhaps it was written by the children. Who can say for sure. But one thing is clear: the film's sole purpose was to make a quick buck in the lucrative kiddie matinee market. If only the parents knew exactly what they were forcing their kids to suffer through when they dumped them at the theater, perhaps a few broken spirits could have been avoided.

Needless to say, I love this film with all my withered little heart. I even have the poster hanging in my kitchen, reminding me each morning that miracles DO happen.

So let me get this straight...Santa's passed out at the beach. Along comes the freakin' Easter, ice cream...whatever bunny, with the siren blaring.(At this point we're hoping they're coming to take drunkin' Santa away). The kids are all singing happily while Santa and the bunny take off together leaving the kids and the dog on a deserted beach to find their own way home.....??!!! Great story! Zzzzzzzzz....

I am in awe, stunned. This makes "Plan 9" look polished, professional, normal, even prosaic! I get the feeling of Fellini on heroin.
It's absolutely surreal - it might even be profound! I must acquire this horrific work of art...

I kept waiting for the weird rites on the beach, or the orgy, or the UFOs, or at least for the dog to piss on the spokes. Maybe that's all off-camera? A remix is called for, incorporating these and all other missing elements. And don't forget the Japanese subtitles.

That agonizing, horrible, siren! Its effect on the imagery is positively nauseating, but in a good David-Lynchian way. If fact, the Ice Cream bunny kept reminding me of the giant-cheek girl in Eraserhead. Thus: http://www.horror-wood.com/ehead.6.jpg

Kliph, the Mexican "Santa Claus" is indeed a classic. I will certainly get some of that up somewhere. However, if you can't wait for my lazy, slowness, you can find it on DVD in the cheapo Walgreens bins and dollar stores everywhere!

What was in that ice cream!?!?
This must be the epitome of the oximoronic beauty that is pot-headed creativity – meaning the slightly, just sliiiightly contradictory and utterly surreal process of something wonderfully deranged and unfathomably unfathomable being created while in that state of racing mind where you would really be unable actually to DO anything else than sitting on the ground or couch mumbling a string of utterances like "dude", "man", "woa" and "woa dude/man".
Cuz obviously everyone involved in the making of this movie – that's EVERYONE in the whole process, from the embryo of the idea and the writing of the script (if there was one) to the cutting and the distribution (if there was one) – even (or especially) the singing kids, must have been stoned out of their freakin' skulls.
But in some inexplicable way it got made.
It's hilarious! It's huge! It's wonderful! It's mindbogglingly terrifying and breathtakingly beautiful! I'm enthralled and horrified. I'm at a loss for words (yet strangely able to concoct a whole bunch of them). And I'm not even stoned (but by the drug that is the Ice Cream Bunny).
Yes, oh Jesus yes – Christmas finally has a meaning!